Family Annihilator
"Family annihilator" is a term used to refer to someone who commits familicide, the act of killing one's own family, usually immediate members, but instances of the perpetrator targeting other relatives, such as in-laws, are not unheard of. Reasons for familicide vary, and can include: * Spite or revenge (for example, a former spouse killing their ex-partner and the children due to custody issues) * A twisted act of mercy * Mental illness or instability, such as severe depression caused by multiple real or imagined failures * Eliminating witnesses during a robbery Out of all forms of mass murder, familicide is regarded as the most common, and often ends with the perpetrator (who is almost always male) committing suicide. On Beyond Borders, the term family annihilator is applied to both those who commit familicide and to serial/rampage killers who specifically target families. On Beyond Borders *Jerry Tidwell ("Beyond Borders"): As a teenager, Tidwell slaughtered his entire family due to the abuse he suffered from his father and the hatred he held against his stepmother and step-siblings for escaping the abuse. After being briefly institutionalized for the familicide, he began targeting other families, killing them in different countries while they were on vacation. Real World Familicides * John List: Shot his mother, wife, two sons, and daughter to death, claiming to have done so because he wanted to spare them "the shame" of having to live with a man who failed to support them in his role as patriarch (List had been recently fired, and had incurring massive debt). * Ronald DeFeo, Jr.: Claiming that voices from inside the house told him to do it, he shot his father, mother, two brothers, and two sisters to death while they slept in their home, 112 Ocean Avenue, which later became infamous as the site of an apparent haunting dubbed "the Amityville Horror". * Dipendra of Nepal: Nepali prince, and the perpetrator of the Nepalese royal massacre, in which he murdered nine members of his family, and wounded five others, before attempting suicide by shooting himself in the head (dying three days later after falling into a coma). * Ronald Simmons: Spree killer who began his rampage by wiping out fourteen members of his family through various means around Christmas. The victims included his wife, eight children (one of them the result of an incestuous relationship with a daughter), three grandchildren, a daughter-in-law, and a son-in-law. * Ramon Salcido: Spree killer whose first six victims were members of his family: his wife, two of his three daughters, his mother-in-law, and two sister-in-laws. He also slashed the throat of his third daughter, but she survived. Family Killers * Dennis Rader, The BTK Killer: During Rader's first known murder, he killed the entire Otero family excluding the eldest son Charlie who arrived home later to find their bodies.: the father, Joseph Otero, the mother, Julie, and their children, Joseph Jr. and Josephine. All of them were either strangled, suffocated or, as with the daughter, hanged. It should be noted that, when he killed Shirley Vian Relford, he tied up her children and put them in a bathroom to get them out of the way, even leaving a few toys and blankets inside for them to make it as comfortable for them as possible. A film called "I Survived BTK" was released in 2008 featuring several interviews and statements from the surviving son, Charlie Otero. * Leonard Lake and Charles Ng: In a way, Lake and Ng can be considered family annihilators as they would on occasion kill entire families, disposing of the men and children before raping, torturing and killing the women. * Yang Xinhai, The Monster Killer. A prolific Chinese serial killer and rapist whose spree lasted from 1999 to 2003. He almost always killed entire families, breaking into their homes in the middle of the night with an assortment of makeshift weapons, such as shovels and meat cleavers. * Anatoly Onoprienko, The Beast of Ukraine: A Ukrainian serial/spree killer who was convicted of killing 52 people, between 1989 and 1996. 43 of them were killed in the last six months of his rampage. He would target entire families or groups of people, kill everyone, including possible witnesses, with a variety of weapons, including a hunting rifle, a double-barrelled shotgun, an axe and a hammer. * John Linley Frazier, The Killer Prophet: Entered the home of eye surgeon Victor Ohta and killed him, his wife, children, and secretary with a .22 handgun in 1970. All victims were bound and blindfolded with colorful scarves from the house. Frazier then set the house on fire and left a rambling note on Ohta's car. He claimed his motivation for the massacre was that "voices from God" had told him to "seek vengeance on those who rape the environment". External Links * Familicide * List of family slaughters Category:Criminal Pathology